


like a thing that's smoking

by blackdog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Episode Tag, Episode: s08e17 Goodbye Stranger, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:22:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1520819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackdog/pseuds/blackdog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg and Ruby, after all of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a thing that's smoking

**Author's Note:**

> So I found this on my computer and it was basically done so I just decided to throw it up here, w/e.

It turns out that the afterlife for demons is awful.

Meg wakes up with a killer headache and her heart still tight with all those gross emotions: worry, fear, anger on behalf of others. She wakes up, and everything is red light and smoke. The ground is solid but the smoke is around her knees, so much so that she can't even see her own boots through it. She can't even see more than a few feet in front of her face. There's no smell, at all, and complete silence, like she's got cotton balls wedged in her ears.

It sucks.

But at least it's better than hell.

 

**

 

She walks through the red and the smoke, even though that's all there is, even though she has no destination. But she keeps moving, because that's what she's good at. Sometimes she passes others—black, blurry shapes in the smoke—but they shy away from her when they feel her coming. They know the shape and taste of her without looking, and once upon a time that would have bought her obedience and respect, but it's been a long time since she was a princess of hell.

The only thing that dead demons do is gossip about what's happened in the world of the living. Everyone here knows everything she's done. Now they see her coming, and even if she couldn't _feel_ it tangibly in the air, she'd know what they're thinking: this is the one who went wrong. This is the one who killed for humans, for Winchesters, at that. This is the one who strayed.

Straying, though, implies that her path was sound to begin with. But every father she'd had was a liar, and she'd lost every cause they'd given her. She's not sorry for having found a way to survive, or for having found something to fight for on her own terms, even if it made her mouth bitter, even she never understood it all.

If a thousand years ago someone had told her that she'd be taking such a strange vindictive pride in having fought side by side with two humans she'd spent years hating and a not-quite-right angel, she would have eaten their hearts in front of their eyes, just because she could. Now she walks through smoke and daydreams about cheap forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor.

 

**

 

Ruby finds her.

It's been a hundred years or more since they've seen each other, but Meg recognizes the shape and feel of Ruby the moment she appears. She stops walking, just for a moment, because Ruby is coming towards her—the first demon to do so since Meg's landed here. It feels like Ruby's sought her out, but Meg can't understand why. Ruby was a hero in hell—the most loyal, the most brave, the one who had drawn Sam Winchester into releasing Lucifer.

“He's still alive?” Ruby asks, voice muffled, like she's talking through cotton.

Meg rolls her eyes. Of course that's what this is about: the Winchesters and their ability to make people give a damn. “Not for lack of trying,” she replies, and suddenly Ruby's standing right there in front of her. She looks solid and real, and Meg's a little taken aback by the clarity to her features—her dark hair, her big brown eyes, her pink lips. There's concern there, a worry that she doesn't even bother trying to hide, so Meg takes pity on her. “The last time I saw the Winchesters, they were speeding away in their stupid car and leaving me to die for them.”

“And you did,” Ruby says flatly, like she doesn't understand. “Why did you?”

“You know about the apocalypse?” Meg asks, instead of answering the question. “Everything that went down after you got gutted in that church, I mean, do you know what happened? Things have changed since then. It's not all as easy as it used to be.”

“It wasn't easy then,” says Ruby, and she sounds almost bitter.

“Our fathers were all bastards,” Meg says with a shrug. “Wanna walk with me a while?”

 

**

 

It's nice, having someone by her side. Meg's never liked being alone, not really, for all that she generally hates people. Ruby's not bad company, either, when she's not trying to talk about the apocalypse that she missed. All they do is walk, side by side, through the smoke.

“Can't find a way out if we're just sitting here,” Meg says. She knows there isn't any escape: not from here, not for her, not this time. There's smoke and shadows and red, endless in every direction. It's like a dream sequence from a bad movie. Meg wonders if it looks the same for all of them—if Ruby sees the same colors, the same shifting sequences of crimson and darkness.

“I want French fries,” Ruby says, “and bad monster movies.” It's been five minutes or five hours or five days since the last time they've spoken—the time blurs together, loops backwards. Meg thinks sometimes that they're moving in slow motion, or maybe they're walking backwards; it's not like they could tell, not with this smoke, when they can't even see their boots on the ground.

Meg snorts. “Do you think this is some kind of squishy share time, where we talk about our feelings and all the things we miss?”

Ruby rolls her eyes. “Just making conversation. If you have any _squishy_ things you want to get out, feel free.”

“I miss whiskey. Beer. Star Wars.” There hadn't been a lot left in the world for her, there at the end, but she thinks about Castiel and the taste of bright white light in her mouth. Maybe it's ironic that the people she liked most at the time of her death were some of the people she'd put the most effort in trying to kill.

“You know, I actually liked the prequels,” Ruby says mildly. “Sam did too. We watched all three of them one night.”

Meg makes a sound of indignation. “Okay, now I understand why they killed you.”

“Jar Jar Binks was my favorite character,” Ruby continues, smirking a little.

“Now you're just messing with me.”

Ruby tilts her head back and laughs.

 

**

 

“I hated Hell,” Meg says. “Every moment I spent in that stinking, choking pit—”

“Yeah,” Ruby agrees. “It was Hell. No one liked it.” She pauses for a moment, reflects. “Expect Alistair.”

“Yeah, and I hated him too.”

“So this is better than Hell,” Ruby says decisively. “Better than Hell, and Jar Jar Binks, and Taco Bell.”

“Hey, fuck you, I loved Taco Bell,” Meg replies, deeply offended. “We're demons, it's not like the heartburn means anything to us. Cheap, disgusting, pseudo-Mexican food is the stuff that dreams are made of.” She thinks, anyway—it's not like she can even remember what it's like to dream properly, the way humans do in their sleep, and she can barely remember the taste of a burrito.

There are a lot of things she's having trouble recalling, and she's more than a little afraid that sooner or later it's all going to slip away. Azazel smiling wickedly at her the first time he'd let her loose on the surface and she'd coated herself in blood like warpaint; the touch of Lucifer's hands against her stolen face; the press of her back against a wall as an angel shoved her against it; the rumble of Dean Winchester's behemoth car, Lynyrd Skynyrd playing just a little too loud on the radio.

The back of Ruby's hand brushes against Meg's fingers, just enough to feel it, just enough for reassurance, light enough to pretend it wasn't on purpose. Meg nudges her shoulder against Ruby's, too hard to be unintentional. “Well,” Ruby says, “when we get out of here, I'll let you take me to Taco Bell.”

Meg tries for a moment to imagine laying her eyes on anything that isn't this smoky red wasteland and finds it impossible. They've been walking for what feels like forever, and might have only been a day, and nothing has changed—the smoke hasn't gotten thicker or lighter, the light has neither dimmed nor brightened. She tries to picture the bright lights of a Taco Bell sign, high up on a forty-foot pole, poking out of the gloom, and for some reason it makes her more sad than amused. “Do you actually think we're getting out of here?” she asks.

Ruby shrugs. “If anyone could.”

 


End file.
